Dreamt this game last night. Have only tested it 2-player but it seems like it might work?
Start by playing I Spy as usual. One player is the spy, they pick an object they can see and say "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with C" (or, you know, substitute the first letter in the object's name).
Any other player may guess what the object is. If they guess correctly they get a point and start the next round as the spy. But if they guess wrong, the spy gets a point and the round continues.
Any other player may become the spy and raise the stakes by repeating the description with a new detail - e.g. "I spy with my little eye, something beginning with C that is red" - describing an object they can see (which may turn out to be the same as the original spy's object, or may be different). Guesses are now worth one more point. You can raise the stakes as many times as you like, but each time you must add a new detail while repeating all previous details.
Play as many rounds as you want to I guess?
Clarifications:
- There's only one spy at a time; when someone raises the stakes they are now the spy and the previous spy is back to being a regular player.
- I guess there's no reason why you should have to start with a letter? Any detail will do.
- If there's a bunch of similar objects, like a shelf of books, should you have to pick a specific object? That's probably better I think?
Wednesday, 20 November 2013
Thursday, 7 November 2013
Luck
Most games feature an element of randomness, or something that behaves like it (e.g. hidden information, simultaneous decisions, unpredictable chaotic systems).
Sometimes I hear some games dismissed as being "just luck". Usually this isn't literally true (we're not talking about Snakes and Ladders), so why do people say this? Maybe because, even when you've made "good" moves you can lose for reasons out of your control. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - Tom Lehmann describes it as "one of the most powerful things that strategy games can teach us". But also, often this judgement is made rashly: things that appear purely random to a beginner can be taken advantage of by a skilled player. A game having elements of luck isn't opposed to it requiring skill, there can be deep skill in navigating chance.
I think of Race for the Galaxy. My skills have probably decayed a bit now, but when I played regularly I won most of the time. And at first some people dismissed this as luck - "you drew a lucky combo, I didn't get any cards that worked together" - until they realised I got lucky almost every game, and so could they. Partly this is learning to recognise good combinations among the cards you draw, and shifting course to accommodate them - often beginners will dismiss good cards because they're fixated on one "strategy" (and other times they'll insist on playing them to their detriment when they don't fit; navigating between these takes subtlety). Partly it's about learning to use the mechanisms the game offers for controlling and responding to your luck - there are so many small decisions in terms of which cards to keep or discard, whether to draw a greater number of cards or to have more control over which cards you draw, whether to reveal a card now or hold it back for later.
Ascension also is a game worth playing to study chance. Much of the game's depth comes from subtle manipulations of the randomised cards available to buy in the centre: responding to what's available, denying your opponent cards that fit their strategy, searching for the ideal cards for your own. And also recognising that removing a card from the centre may create an opportunity for your opponent, so sometimes it's best to not buy something that would benefit you just to avoid that risk (this justifies why cards in the centre are superior to always-available cards at the same price). Also there's trashing cards from your deck - beginners often find it hard to understand this because it feels like throwing away resources, but by removing the less valuable cards you increase the frequency with which you draw the better ones.
Okay here are some general concepts that I think can apply to a whole bunch of different games.
* The more random events occur, the more likely the overall distribution is to average out to something not very random at all (i.e. the Central Limit Theorem). Safer to take lots of chances rather than letting everything hang on just one. This applies in a stronger form to card games, since any given card is guaranteed to be drawn eventually if you go through the whole deck.
* So there are two broad ways of performing better at random events: increase the number of events, or increase the chances of success on each one. In an RPG: make more attacks, or improve your chances to hit.
* There's often a risk-reward trade-off; choosing between a high chance of a small advantage and low chance of a big advantage. Which one is correct depends on your position: if you're behind you want to take a long shot for a chance of getting ahead because the reliable option will reliably not be enough, and if you're ahead you usually want to play it safe to maintain your lead. When there's only one possibility that will let you win, no matter how unlikely it is, play assuming that it will happen. But usually you want to bear in mind all possible outcomes and have a plan for each.
* Flipping that around: if something comes together perfectly and someone scores extremely highly, it was probably a long shot rather than something you can count on happening again.
Don't be bitter and blame luck. Embrace it and understand it, flow with the chaos.
Sometimes I hear some games dismissed as being "just luck". Usually this isn't literally true (we're not talking about Snakes and Ladders), so why do people say this? Maybe because, even when you've made "good" moves you can lose for reasons out of your control. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - Tom Lehmann describes it as "one of the most powerful things that strategy games can teach us". But also, often this judgement is made rashly: things that appear purely random to a beginner can be taken advantage of by a skilled player. A game having elements of luck isn't opposed to it requiring skill, there can be deep skill in navigating chance.
I think of Race for the Galaxy. My skills have probably decayed a bit now, but when I played regularly I won most of the time. And at first some people dismissed this as luck - "you drew a lucky combo, I didn't get any cards that worked together" - until they realised I got lucky almost every game, and so could they. Partly this is learning to recognise good combinations among the cards you draw, and shifting course to accommodate them - often beginners will dismiss good cards because they're fixated on one "strategy" (and other times they'll insist on playing them to their detriment when they don't fit; navigating between these takes subtlety). Partly it's about learning to use the mechanisms the game offers for controlling and responding to your luck - there are so many small decisions in terms of which cards to keep or discard, whether to draw a greater number of cards or to have more control over which cards you draw, whether to reveal a card now or hold it back for later.
Ascension also is a game worth playing to study chance. Much of the game's depth comes from subtle manipulations of the randomised cards available to buy in the centre: responding to what's available, denying your opponent cards that fit their strategy, searching for the ideal cards for your own. And also recognising that removing a card from the centre may create an opportunity for your opponent, so sometimes it's best to not buy something that would benefit you just to avoid that risk (this justifies why cards in the centre are superior to always-available cards at the same price). Also there's trashing cards from your deck - beginners often find it hard to understand this because it feels like throwing away resources, but by removing the less valuable cards you increase the frequency with which you draw the better ones.
Okay here are some general concepts that I think can apply to a whole bunch of different games.
* The more random events occur, the more likely the overall distribution is to average out to something not very random at all (i.e. the Central Limit Theorem). Safer to take lots of chances rather than letting everything hang on just one. This applies in a stronger form to card games, since any given card is guaranteed to be drawn eventually if you go through the whole deck.
* So there are two broad ways of performing better at random events: increase the number of events, or increase the chances of success on each one. In an RPG: make more attacks, or improve your chances to hit.
* There's often a risk-reward trade-off; choosing between a high chance of a small advantage and low chance of a big advantage. Which one is correct depends on your position: if you're behind you want to take a long shot for a chance of getting ahead because the reliable option will reliably not be enough, and if you're ahead you usually want to play it safe to maintain your lead. When there's only one possibility that will let you win, no matter how unlikely it is, play assuming that it will happen. But usually you want to bear in mind all possible outcomes and have a plan for each.
* Flipping that around: if something comes together perfectly and someone scores extremely highly, it was probably a long shot rather than something you can count on happening again.
Don't be bitter and blame luck. Embrace it and understand it, flow with the chaos.
Monday, 4 November 2013
Tuesday, 8 October 2013
general status update
- I just moved house and getting an internet connection is taking its time. So I am unreliable right now. As usual.
- OK I know some of you are waiting for 868-HACK to be released on PC. I've not been making much progress on this. There's not a huge amount to be done but I want to get it right not have BAD PORT. I think it's been really good to do this separately, I've fixed a bunch of bugs while only having to update them in one place - maintaining several copies of a game in different places is such a hassle. Probably simultaneous release is Optimal Marketing Strategy but you've got to sacrifice some things when it's just you.
- But hey the response to that game has been pretty great. Some really nice reviews link link link link link, a few negatives but hey whatever I don't expect to please everyone. A bunch of negative comments about the (DRASTICALLY EXORBITANT) price, but it's achieved my goal of being able to afford to keep doing this for a while more which is FANTASTIC (I just feel sorry for anyone who tries to do this without someone to support them for a few years to get to that point). Talked with indie statik about that. Anyway, way cool, thanks everyone.
- Some concerns about whether .SCORE is too strong for single-game high scores? I suspect part of this is because it's part of the initial set of progs available, whereas other high-scoring progs are unlocked later. But I'm keeping an eye on it, it's interesting to watch. I personally pick it up very rarely because it's so risky, and I've had 90+ scores without it. But basically the problem is: a lot of what's balancing it is that risk (enemies spawned on acquisition, and lack of resources later if they're spent on it earlier) and if you just try enough times you'll get games where the risk pays off. This problem exists in the usual scoring system as well, perhaps less transparently, which was my reason for focusing on streaks (for probabilities multiply out to be very small very quickly). Perhaps I should have omitted single-game scores entirely and only had a streak table? Insufficient bravery.
- I've been making a 4-player game, SMESPORT. It started as a stripped-down dotalike for the 7-day RTS jam, but I failed the jam and kept working on it through several iterations until now it looks a lot closer to Hokra, I should write more about this process sometime. It was shown at a recent Wild Rumpus in Texas, which sadly I couldn't make it to. I'll be showing it at Nottingham Gamecity in a couple of weeks (officially in the open arcade on 20th, 21st, 23rd, 25th but I'll be around for the whole time). Hopefully watch lots of people play it and learn things to tune it to be better. Might try to organise a tournament towards the end of the week if people are into it? It's really intense competitive electrosport.
- I'm speaking at Practice at NYU in November. Can't escape academia. Upstart. Something about roguelikes.
- Yeah still doing little things on Helix sporadically. Ugh who knows, no hurry, I'm finding it good for harvesting procrastination energy anyway.
- Not sure if I mentioned BECOME AN ARTIST on here? Made it with mcc for a jam a few weeks back. I'm still finding it pretty useful for making pretty pictures.
- OK I know some of you are waiting for 868-HACK to be released on PC. I've not been making much progress on this. There's not a huge amount to be done but I want to get it right not have BAD PORT. I think it's been really good to do this separately, I've fixed a bunch of bugs while only having to update them in one place - maintaining several copies of a game in different places is such a hassle. Probably simultaneous release is Optimal Marketing Strategy but you've got to sacrifice some things when it's just you.
- But hey the response to that game has been pretty great. Some really nice reviews link link link link link, a few negatives but hey whatever I don't expect to please everyone. A bunch of negative comments about the (DRASTICALLY EXORBITANT) price, but it's achieved my goal of being able to afford to keep doing this for a while more which is FANTASTIC (I just feel sorry for anyone who tries to do this without someone to support them for a few years to get to that point). Talked with indie statik about that. Anyway, way cool, thanks everyone.
- Some concerns about whether .SCORE is too strong for single-game high scores? I suspect part of this is because it's part of the initial set of progs available, whereas other high-scoring progs are unlocked later. But I'm keeping an eye on it, it's interesting to watch. I personally pick it up very rarely because it's so risky, and I've had 90+ scores without it. But basically the problem is: a lot of what's balancing it is that risk (enemies spawned on acquisition, and lack of resources later if they're spent on it earlier) and if you just try enough times you'll get games where the risk pays off. This problem exists in the usual scoring system as well, perhaps less transparently, which was my reason for focusing on streaks (for probabilities multiply out to be very small very quickly). Perhaps I should have omitted single-game scores entirely and only had a streak table? Insufficient bravery.
- I've been making a 4-player game, SMESPORT. It started as a stripped-down dotalike for the 7-day RTS jam, but I failed the jam and kept working on it through several iterations until now it looks a lot closer to Hokra, I should write more about this process sometime. It was shown at a recent Wild Rumpus in Texas, which sadly I couldn't make it to. I'll be showing it at Nottingham Gamecity in a couple of weeks (officially in the open arcade on 20th, 21st, 23rd, 25th but I'll be around for the whole time). Hopefully watch lots of people play it and learn things to tune it to be better. Might try to organise a tournament towards the end of the week if people are into it? It's really intense competitive electrosport.
- I'm speaking at Practice at NYU in November. Can't escape academia. Upstart. Something about roguelikes.
- Yeah still doing little things on Helix sporadically. Ugh who knows, no hurry, I'm finding it good for harvesting procrastination energy anyway.
- Not sure if I mentioned BECOME AN ARTIST on here? Made it with mcc for a jam a few weeks back. I'm still finding it pretty useful for making pretty pictures.
Sunday, 6 October 2013
Pierre Menard, player of the scholar's mate.
I'm not a big fan of Chess - it has too much memorisation and menial computation for my taste - but I do partake on occasion. Sometimes my wife challenges me, and she almost always wins. But there was one game I like to mention from time to time which went differently. We opened with a few turns of reasonable seeming moves - I brought out my queen, she responded with her horses. Then I noticed an opportunity for check and just went for it, even though I expected I'd probably lose my queen in the process. She reached to respond and then paused, looked closer, furrowed her brow, and laughed. I looked back at the board to see what the fuss was about, tried to work out which move she was considering and.. couldn't find any. I'd somehow stumbled into a scholar's mate and she - not expecting any such trickery - had fallen for it. Cue obnoxious gloating.
Another time my friend Martin challenged me to play without a board. We exchanged a few moves, it began as an interesting intellectual exercise, but before very long at all - just as it was reaching the limits of our ability to track it - he announced checkmate. Incredulous I thought through the board state, eventually admitting that yes, he'd pulled off a scholar's mate. He'd read of this opening and deliberately set out to attempt it.
Two games which were mathematically isomorphic, having the exact same moves and outcome, but with completely different meanings. One accidental, the other intentional.
How we read a game depends on who is playing. Each move has a process of thought behind it; identical moves can be interpreted differently if they differ in intent. How you understand Deep Blue vs. Kasparov depends on whether you view it as a conflict between Man and Machine, or between individual and collective human effort. A beginner taking a risky opening simply does not realise what they're doing; an intermediate player may be hoping to get lucky, or perhaps to throw their opponent off-guard; while an expert has calculated the outcome and is confident they can handle it. Was that a mistake, a bluff, or a brilliant gambit you don't understand yet?
When we talk about "replayability" in games we're usually thinking of them offering variety by presenting different possible situations and moves. But even identical moves and positions may mean different things. (And of course, as Ben Abraham points out any game is replayable in the sense that any book is rereadable - even if the events and words are the same, we have changed.)
There are only nine games of Rock-Paper-Scissors, and three of them are ties.
(The words in this post are based on actual events, but I have on two occasions lifted them from truth into fiction. The first game may not have been an exact scholar's mate, but it was a close approximation with perhaps an additional move. And let the record show that I thwarted Martin's attempt - at which point he lost interest for he was unprepared for the challenge of a spoken-word Chess game without having chosen his moves in advance. But in a nearby universe these could both be true.)
Another time my friend Martin challenged me to play without a board. We exchanged a few moves, it began as an interesting intellectual exercise, but before very long at all - just as it was reaching the limits of our ability to track it - he announced checkmate. Incredulous I thought through the board state, eventually admitting that yes, he'd pulled off a scholar's mate. He'd read of this opening and deliberately set out to attempt it.
Two games which were mathematically isomorphic, having the exact same moves and outcome, but with completely different meanings. One accidental, the other intentional.
How we read a game depends on who is playing. Each move has a process of thought behind it; identical moves can be interpreted differently if they differ in intent. How you understand Deep Blue vs. Kasparov depends on whether you view it as a conflict between Man and Machine, or between individual and collective human effort. A beginner taking a risky opening simply does not realise what they're doing; an intermediate player may be hoping to get lucky, or perhaps to throw their opponent off-guard; while an expert has calculated the outcome and is confident they can handle it. Was that a mistake, a bluff, or a brilliant gambit you don't understand yet?
When we talk about "replayability" in games we're usually thinking of them offering variety by presenting different possible situations and moves. But even identical moves and positions may mean different things. (And of course, as Ben Abraham points out any game is replayable in the sense that any book is rereadable - even if the events and words are the same, we have changed.)
There are only nine games of Rock-Paper-Scissors, and three of them are ties.
(The words in this post are based on actual events, but I have on two occasions lifted them from truth into fiction. The first game may not have been an exact scholar's mate, but it was a close approximation with perhaps an additional move. And let the record show that I thwarted Martin's attempt - at which point he lost interest for he was unprepared for the challenge of a spoken-word Chess game without having chosen his moves in advance. But in a nearby universe these could both be true.)
Monday, 23 September 2013
Last Hits
Early role-playing games attempted to simulate fantasy novels, making up characters who go on adventures / find treasure / defeat villains. There's a typical progression where characters become more powerful over time: the puny farm-boy eventually becomes an arch-mage, the nomadic barbarian leads an army and becomes king. This gets implemented in game mechanics both by gaining material resources (treasure and gold) and with "experience points", an abstract numeric score determining what abilities a character has access to.
In some early RPGs there was a direct equivalence between gold and experience points - the characters are treasure hunters, their achievements are measured by how much treasure they bring home. In others experience points were awarded primarily for defeating enemies. Treasure and monsters are usually found in proximity so these are closely related, but there's a difference: if you sneak past a dragon and steal some of its hoard, have you really defeated it? Still others took a more high-level approach rewarding heroic quests completed. Different styles of play are encouraged depending on which specific actions are rewarded.
These RPGs were administered by a human storyteller, so they were able to have a certain looseness in their rules; the dungeon-master could interpret reasonable requests and deal with unexpected situations sensibly. When computer-mediated RPGs were developed it became necessary to make the rules a lot more precise and explicit. Rules that work in a tabletop setting could lead to undesirable side-effects in a digital game.
If we give the same reward for bypassing an enemy by any means (killing it, sneaking past it, bribing it), then what happens if you first deal with them non-violently and then turn back and attack them? This isn't the intended behaviour, but if you gain something extra from doing it then optimal play means doing it. But if you don't get anything from doing this, that doesn't really make sense - surely they have worldly possessions that you can loot from them, and if you gain experience from fighting why should fighting an enemy you've already walked past be any different? You can think of ways to deal with this, but a lot of games went with the simplest option: deal with all obstacles by killing them.
So okay we got lots of games about mainly killing, that's not so interesting. But now what happens to this system when there are multiple characters, multiple players? The absolute simplest way you might program it is: when an attack kills an enemy, give a reward to the source of that attack. But in a teamwork situation that doesn't make sense - whoever landed the killing blow might not be the one who contributed the most. Maybe you come up with a more complicated system where you track how much damage was dealt by each character, but that doesn't quite work either - different character roles might deal less damage while still contributing as much to the group (a healer, for example). Maybe just divide rewards evenly amongst everyone involved: this is fine in a strictly cooperative setting, but outside of that it might create an incentive to jump in at the last moment to get a disproportionate share.
Now consider Dota 2 (and family). The basic setup is a battle between two armies in which the human players (five a side) control heroes that help out and influence the outcome of the war. The heroes advance in the now-typical CRPG manner, earning gold and experience for killing enemies. But the beautiful, absurd thing Dota does is to embrace the side-effects of specifically rewarding the killing blow. Experience is divided among everyone near a death, but gold is only given for getting the last hit, resulting in this weird bureaucracy of trying to get the reward from a fight without contributing much to it. It takes a buggy implementation of an oversimplified computerisation of a broken tabletop mechanic and expands it out into its own thing (it's the Game Title: Lost Levels of RPGs). It still pretends to simulate heroism, but in fact we roleplay heartless generals waiting while their armies slaughter each other, jumping into the fray only when the outcome is already decided in order to claim the glory. Indeed it encourages helping in the fight as little as possible, for a surfeit of success is unprofitable - it advances the battle into the opponent's territory before you're high-enough level. We sit back and watch the little people die until we secure more funding. It's pretty realistic.
And hey then also you can "deny" last hits, stabbing your own soldiers in the back to prevent your opponents getting the rewards for killing them. WHAT. This arose as a natural consequence of the previous rule but was then made explicit with the game indicating it with a unique animation and sounds.
CAN A VIDEOGAME MAKE YOU FEEL REAL EMOTION SAY SOMETHING MEANINGFUL ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION BE TRUE ART.
Well what about this lovely depiction of how rules can have consequences contrary to their intended effect, how when you make laws to encourage people to do something they'll figure out what the incentive actually measures rather than what you meant them to do, how we can appear to be doing one thing while actually achieving its opposite.
In some early RPGs there was a direct equivalence between gold and experience points - the characters are treasure hunters, their achievements are measured by how much treasure they bring home. In others experience points were awarded primarily for defeating enemies. Treasure and monsters are usually found in proximity so these are closely related, but there's a difference: if you sneak past a dragon and steal some of its hoard, have you really defeated it? Still others took a more high-level approach rewarding heroic quests completed. Different styles of play are encouraged depending on which specific actions are rewarded.
These RPGs were administered by a human storyteller, so they were able to have a certain looseness in their rules; the dungeon-master could interpret reasonable requests and deal with unexpected situations sensibly. When computer-mediated RPGs were developed it became necessary to make the rules a lot more precise and explicit. Rules that work in a tabletop setting could lead to undesirable side-effects in a digital game.
If we give the same reward for bypassing an enemy by any means (killing it, sneaking past it, bribing it), then what happens if you first deal with them non-violently and then turn back and attack them? This isn't the intended behaviour, but if you gain something extra from doing it then optimal play means doing it. But if you don't get anything from doing this, that doesn't really make sense - surely they have worldly possessions that you can loot from them, and if you gain experience from fighting why should fighting an enemy you've already walked past be any different? You can think of ways to deal with this, but a lot of games went with the simplest option: deal with all obstacles by killing them.
So okay we got lots of games about mainly killing, that's not so interesting. But now what happens to this system when there are multiple characters, multiple players? The absolute simplest way you might program it is: when an attack kills an enemy, give a reward to the source of that attack. But in a teamwork situation that doesn't make sense - whoever landed the killing blow might not be the one who contributed the most. Maybe you come up with a more complicated system where you track how much damage was dealt by each character, but that doesn't quite work either - different character roles might deal less damage while still contributing as much to the group (a healer, for example). Maybe just divide rewards evenly amongst everyone involved: this is fine in a strictly cooperative setting, but outside of that it might create an incentive to jump in at the last moment to get a disproportionate share.
Now consider Dota 2 (and family). The basic setup is a battle between two armies in which the human players (five a side) control heroes that help out and influence the outcome of the war. The heroes advance in the now-typical CRPG manner, earning gold and experience for killing enemies. But the beautiful, absurd thing Dota does is to embrace the side-effects of specifically rewarding the killing blow. Experience is divided among everyone near a death, but gold is only given for getting the last hit, resulting in this weird bureaucracy of trying to get the reward from a fight without contributing much to it. It takes a buggy implementation of an oversimplified computerisation of a broken tabletop mechanic and expands it out into its own thing (it's the Game Title: Lost Levels of RPGs). It still pretends to simulate heroism, but in fact we roleplay heartless generals waiting while their armies slaughter each other, jumping into the fray only when the outcome is already decided in order to claim the glory. Indeed it encourages helping in the fight as little as possible, for a surfeit of success is unprofitable - it advances the battle into the opponent's territory before you're high-enough level. We sit back and watch the little people die until we secure more funding. It's pretty realistic.
And hey then also you can "deny" last hits, stabbing your own soldiers in the back to prevent your opponents getting the rewards for killing them. WHAT. This arose as a natural consequence of the previous rule but was then made explicit with the game indicating it with a unique animation and sounds.
CAN A VIDEOGAME MAKE YOU FEEL REAL EMOTION SAY SOMETHING MEANINGFUL ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION BE TRUE ART.
Well what about this lovely depiction of how rules can have consequences contrary to their intended effect, how when you make laws to encourage people to do something they'll figure out what the incentive actually measures rather than what you meant them to do, how we can appear to be doing one thing while actually achieving its opposite.
Thursday, 29 August 2013
868-HACK (iOS)
868-HACK (originally the 7-day roguelike 86856527) is now on the iOS app store.
(Sorry I don't have a PC version yet - I was originally intending to release them at the same time but then I got distracted working on other things and it's not ready yet and I figured it was better not to rush it. There is only one of me!*)
*disputed
Okay what's changed from the 7 day version?
basically: A LOT.
- new programs.
- almost all the old programs ones modified (some in very subtle ways).
- a tutorial (skip this if you enjoy figuring out everything for yourself).
- better balanced.
- online high scores.
- streak scores too (sum across consecutive plays without dying).
- more graphics and sounds.
- so many little details I can't remember off the top of my head.
- secret stuff.
I should repeat about the tutorial: some people really enjoyed the blind confusion of working out all the mechanics themselves, and if that might be you then it's totally reasonable to skip it - you can always go back to it later. I've gone back and forth over whether it was right to include one at all, but ultimately most players were completely lost without some guidance and there's very much a game worth playing still there even once you understand what all the rules are. I still find it interesting to play myself and I know every detail of how it works.
Oh also - don't expect to understand everything after just the tutorial. It gives you the basics, but you still have to figure out how to put them together.
Also, several programs start out locked. Feel free to hit "unlock all" if you want to skip that, but I'd recommend going for the gradual introduction, you'll get a better understanding of the interactions between them.
Thanks so much to everyone who's helped out with this, with testing and suggestions. In particular, massive thanks to Leon Arnott, who in addition to helping out by writing most of the victory text and some of the intro text, made numerous excellent suggestions. And then repeated the suggestions when I didn't pay attention. And tirelessly kept on repeating them until I actually got around to trying them out and realised he'd been right all along. He also made a fan page (somewhat deceptive). Bless Leon.
get itttttt
(or, if you don't have one of those devices have patience I'll get a version you can play when I can! sorry!)
(also could someone please beat my high scores? ta.)
(Sorry I don't have a PC version yet - I was originally intending to release them at the same time but then I got distracted working on other things and it's not ready yet and I figured it was better not to rush it. There is only one of me!*)
*disputed
Okay what's changed from the 7 day version?
basically: A LOT.
- new programs.
- almost all the old programs ones modified (some in very subtle ways).
- a tutorial (skip this if you enjoy figuring out everything for yourself).
- better balanced.
- online high scores.
- streak scores too (sum across consecutive plays without dying).
- more graphics and sounds.
- so many little details I can't remember off the top of my head.
- secret stuff.
I should repeat about the tutorial: some people really enjoyed the blind confusion of working out all the mechanics themselves, and if that might be you then it's totally reasonable to skip it - you can always go back to it later. I've gone back and forth over whether it was right to include one at all, but ultimately most players were completely lost without some guidance and there's very much a game worth playing still there even once you understand what all the rules are. I still find it interesting to play myself and I know every detail of how it works.
Oh also - don't expect to understand everything after just the tutorial. It gives you the basics, but you still have to figure out how to put them together.
Also, several programs start out locked. Feel free to hit "unlock all" if you want to skip that, but I'd recommend going for the gradual introduction, you'll get a better understanding of the interactions between them.
Thanks so much to everyone who's helped out with this, with testing and suggestions. In particular, massive thanks to Leon Arnott, who in addition to helping out by writing most of the victory text and some of the intro text, made numerous excellent suggestions. And then repeated the suggestions when I didn't pay attention. And tirelessly kept on repeating them until I actually got around to trying them out and realised he'd been right all along. He also made a fan page (somewhat deceptive). Bless Leon.
get itttttt
(or, if you don't have one of those devices have patience I'll get a version you can play when I can! sorry!)
(also could someone please beat my high scores? ta.)
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